Well since somebody noticed something missing in the previous snapshot we had better go ahead and explain how Kylie got her gangster name, “Kylie Three Toes,” in addition to all her other nick names.

Several years ago we spotted a fairly innocent looking bump on the inside of Kylie’s back left foot. Dr. Monica took a look and couldn’t really tell what was going on so we decided we better remove it and have a biopsy done. We got the news in just a few days that it was in fact a nerve sheath tumor, so Kylie had to have a second surgery this time to remove the entire toe.

Fortunately, with the amputation we got good margins and fortunately Kylie hardly noticed the absence. At first we called it her “magic monkey paw,” but Monica did not appreciate that so we settled on her “lucky fin.” But after awhile we didn’t notice the absence either, it was just part of who she was.

One of our favorite photos of Kylie, ever – and that’s saying a lot! This was taken up in the mountains. Kylie loved exploring the great outdoors, especially climbing around on rocks. It took a little convincing when we first moved to colorado to get her to get her feet wet, but once she did she became some sort of river dog, more than happy to wade in and get those paws nice and muddy!

Once the Kylie nicknames started they kind of never stopped. Shortly after the Frankenweenie, Trashhound, Ready Kilowatt days she got her showgirl name, Kylie Espadrille Cha Cha Cha!

No, we don’t know where that came from it just sort of rolled off the tongue one day and Kylie really liked it so it stuck. We don’t know where most of her nicknames came from, but some of them were obvious like K-dog or K-diddy, which sometimes was DJ K-diddy. Some were random like Monkey or Chicken, which would become compound like Monkey Doodle or Monkey Butt, or Chicken Little or Chicken Butt. “Shorty” was also a favorite, and kind of obvious, and it also sometimes became compound like Shorty Pie or Short Pants. Then “Pants” became a very popular stand alone nickname which eventually at some point became Chicken Pants! We didn’t really know why we had started calling her Chicken Pants until the two girls were on a trip back home to hawaii, the only place we really ever went without her (quarantine laws). We were at the shooting range of all places, which was overrun with wild chickens of all things, but not just your everyday barnyard chickens, they were fancy chickens with feathers all the way down their legs so it looked like they were wearing pants…ergo, Chicken Pants!! We were so excited, it all made sense now because Kylie’s back legs were so puffy and extra furry! You can kind of tell in this picture of her hiny, even though she’s wearing her snow suit and her legs are mostly covered you can see right under her tail how thick her hair is on her hindquarters. Chicken Pants was perfect!

Her gangsta name was “Kylie Three Toes”, she got that after she lost one toe on her back left foot to cancer. But eventually we just started referring to that foot as her “Lucky Fin.”

Then there was the two week period several years ago when we realized she wouldn’t answer to Kylie anymore. So we asked her if she had changed her name. But she wouldn’t answer, so we started trying new names.. Fluffy, Fido, Sadie, we kept guessing but nothing worked so we moved on to more people names of both genders until she finally responded to one. Howard – she came when we called her Howard and not when we called her anything else.

You probably think we’re making this up, but I swear that she would totally ignore us when we called her Kylie but would snap to it when you called her Howard. Until one day she was over it and went back to being Kylie.

Kylie always had a huge imagination, so maybe she was pretending to be Howard Hughes or Howard Stern, we have no idea. But she really did like nicknames, especially when we worked them into a song or something.